Aggies & cold weather: Secrets of a crazed loner

For you, it’s the beginning of a good week. Fall returns to South Texas. At Wurstfest in New Braunfels, the sausages are flying with a quickness. High school football playoffs are two weeks away. And the semi-blue northers have dropped the temperatures to the non-brisk upper 70s. So why am I so pissed off today?

Many will argue that South Texas weather is great because you can do outdoor activities all year long, and that’s better than living “up north” where it snows all the time.

I’m a native Texan, but allow me to disabuse you of this notion of “great weather.”

Down here, it’s miserably hot for 9 1/2 months of the year. It’s legitimately cold and wet for two months out of the year. That means it’s slightly bearable for two weeks a year, and one of those was last week. In most places “up north,” it snows for five months, but the rest of the time, the weather is livable.

If you’re outside in cold weather, you can bundle up and be warm. But if you’re outside in hot weather, you can strip naked and you’re still going to be hot. Take my word for it. I do it all of the time.

Here’s this week’s “embattled Coach Dennis Franchione” item. The Aggie football coach sank even deeper after the team mailed it in against the Oklahoma Sooners Saturday. As a result, my kids’ college fund took a severe hit, if you know what I mean.

Old Aggies are on the Internet, buzzing with rumors of new coaches every day. Now they’re beginning to attack each other over the relative inaccuracy of their specious sources of “insider” information.

If you’re an Aggie, it’s sad. If you’re not an Aggie, it’s very funny.

Answer: The Aggies don’t need to win, but rather think of the children and pay attention to the point spread.

The news business does a better job now — in terms of storytelling, investigative journalism, and graphic presentation — than it ever has. Yet advertisers are pulling out because the audience is declining.

The news business is adapting, but doing so with smaller staffs and fewer resources. Editors are focusing their efforts on more local news coverage. And papers are trying to migrate content to the Web, in hopes that they can figure out how to make money off it. This is having spotty results.

Answer: You old timers need to live longer. This is totally on you. Stop sitting around the house listening to AM radio, eating deep-fat fried tapioca, and griping about the Communists. Get off your wrinkled butts, eat better, and do some mall-walking. My job depends on it. And for younger people — would it kill you to read something that’s not on MySpace?

Television

What an unfortunate series of events! The Writers Guild of America has gone on strike and it’s the beginning of the November sweeps period for local and national television.

If the strike lasts long enough, networks will use up all of the new episodes of prime time programs and those shows will go into reruns, too.

For the moment, that leaves us with local television news and “Sweeps Month,” which is the time of the year when the size of the viewing audience sets advertising rates for the rest of the year.

As a result, local TV news shows trot out their most shrill and least intelligent story ideas. Everywhere you look, there will be sexual predators, topless bars, fecal Coliform, tainted food, dangerous toys, and supernatural crap. These moronic stories will be teased during commercial breaks:

“You think your shoes are safe?” the hairdo will ask. “Think again! Tonight, we tell you about the danger facing your feet in our special report “Shoe Laces: White Death Below Your Ankles!”

Answer: Subscribe to the paper. Please.

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